


You Can't Always Get What You Want

by hrhrionastar



Series: Wicked Stepmother [1]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of a terrible loss, Richard makes a demand. Nicci has no idea why she agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Always Get What You Want

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Marathon Challenge on Legendland for the prompt of _Richard/Nicci, he wants his Han back._ A prequel (sort of) to [The Wicked Stepmother.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/465196)

Richard set the last candle in place. Nicci watched him walk back to her from the outer protective circle. As soon as his Rahl red robes cleared the candles, Nicci lit them all with no more than a whisper of Han and concentration.  
  
Richard knelt opposite Nicci. Their knees touched.  
  
Nicci paid no attention to the rapid beating of her heart and the sick feeling of apprehension twisting her stomach. It took rather more effort to ignore the haunted sorrow in Richard's once-warm brown eyes, but (she told herself firmly) she managed.  
  
"Are you ready?" Richard asked. He held out his hands.  
  
Nicci took them.  
  


* * *

  
  
When she asked herself why Richard wanted his Han back, Nicci could think of only one reason.  
  
When she asked herself why she'd agreed, she couldn't think of any.  
  
Richard had sat on the throne of D'Hara, gripping the arms in a way that told Nicci he'd rather be gripping the hilt of the Sword of Truth. On either side of his white knuckles had stood (had hovered, in Nicci's opinion) the Wizard, Zeddicus, and the Mord'Sith, Cara.  
  
Nicci would be surprised if either Cara or Zeddicus had left Richard alone for longer than half a candlemark since Kahlan's death.  
  
The Mother Confessor had died bringing her second daughter into the world. The baby had survived, although Nicci only knew that because her magic let her eavesdrop on the servants even as far away as the nursery. Nicci was not allowed near the girls, and there had been no birth announcement and no naming ceremony.  
  
Nicci had looked from Richard to his self-appointed protectors—Zeddicus, Cara, his sister Jennsen perched like an unhappy bird on the edge of the Mother Confessor's throne—and raised him one perfectly arched eyebrow.  
  
"Years ago I gave you my Han," Richard had said. His voice was cold and flat and totally unlike himself. "Now you're going to give it back."  
  
Nicci raised him a second eyebrow. Richard remained unmoved.  
  
"And while you and yours demand _my_ powers," Nicci had asked sharply, "who is looking after your daughters?"  
  
Richard's gaze had grown more focused. Zeddicus frowned, Jennsen fidgeted, and Cara touched her agiels.  
  
Nicci now realized, of course, that they must've assumed she was threatening the children, but all she could think about at the time was that the Seeker had many enemies, and Lord Rahl had many more.  
  
The elder of the two girls couldn't have seen more than three summers. She was much too young to defend herself from potential kidnappers, with or without the Confessor magic she had presumably inherited from her mother.  
  
And his grief made Richard vulnerable. If Nicci had wanted to destroy the Rahl family, and the D'Haran Empire with it, she would have chosen just this moment.  
  
"Will you do as I ask?"  
  
Richard had not asked, he had ordered. It annoyed Nicci that he still pretended otherwise, even after years of ruling D'Hara. She glared at him.  
  
If Nicci refused to give Richard her Han voluntarily, there were several ways he might take it.  
  
Dacras were rare now that the Keeper was defeated. Although He might yet return to plague the Seeker, it would be without the Sisters of the Dark, who had not survived the war for the Land of the Living. And the Sisters of the Light had given their Han to the Creator, or the woman they had believed was She.  
  
All except Sister Verna, of course. Nicci suspected that someday she and Verna would cross paths again, although not if Richard drained her of both Han and life.  
  
A quillion was a less sure method for stealing someone's magic than a dacra, and also quite rare. Nicci guessed there might be one in the attics of the People's Palace—home to the detritus of centuries, even if the Prelate would've sneered at such a young empire from her home in the heart of the Old World—but if Richard and the others weren't going to think of that, far be it from her to point it out to them.  
  
The easiest way to obtain someone's Han without these magical tools was to compel them to give it to you.  
  
Nicci had once sworn the Rahl oath of fealty to Richard—at the time it had been the only thing saving her from eternal enslavement to the dreamwalker Jagang, or she never would have done it—but the Rahl Bond could not be used to force compliance, or Darken Rahl would undoubtedly still reign here.  
  
Richard's eldest child—the Crown Princess, Nicci noted in case it ever became relevant—was too young to confess anyone. Her aunt, Kahlan's sister, was in Aydindril, leagues away.  
  
The Mord'Sith were a more pressing threat. They were noted for their skill at persuasion and their ability to turn magic back upon its user, and although Nicci had a few tricks that might protect her from the majority of the leather clad servants Richard had inherited, one look had told her that grief had only sharpened Mistress Cara's skill and determination.  
  
Nicci wasn't sure she could beat Cara in battle. But that wasn't why she said, "Very well," to Richard's outrageous demand.  
  
The truth was that she saw him gripping the arms of his throne and watching her with grief-hardened eyes, and she just couldn't bring herself to add to his suffering.  
  
The Keeper, Nicci thought wryly, would have been so disappointed in her.  
  


* * *

  
  
When Richard had first given Nicci his Han, they had been in the midst of a palace filled with suspicious Sisters of the Light, all of whom were Nicci's enemies, and even more suspicious Sisters of the Dark, in their own way even more so.  
  
Yet privacy was far more difficult to obtain now than it had been then.  
  
Nicci had barely chased the Wizard Zeddicus out when Mistress Cara offered to stand guard, with a special glare of mistrust for Nicci. Richard closed the door firmly on her, but then Jennsen wanted him to eat something—"at least have a drink, Richard, you need your strength," she pleaded.  
  
It was infuriating.  
  
At last everyone was gone. Richard set out the candles, Nicci lit them, and they knelt together in the center of the circle, holding hands.  
  
As Nicci drew breath to begin her spell, someone sneezed.  
  
Her eyes darted from Richard's grim face to a window alcove concealed by a heavy red curtain.  
  
There was a pair of small feet sticking out underneath it.  
  
Richard sighed. "Mary?"  
  
The feet shuffled uneasily, but did not emerge.  
  
Richard rose and strode over to the curtain, ruthlessly pulling it back to expose a dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl clutching a carved wooden doll.  
  
"Daddy, Wispie wants to see," protested Mary as Richard bent and swept her into his arms.  
  
"Wispie?" Nicci murmured, but father and daughter ignored her. Not that she needed an explanation: obviously the doll had a less-than-conventional name. Nicci had never been particularly conventional herself, and she'd nearly destroyed first her own soul and then the world trying to be. She watched Mary with new curiosity.  
  
"Daddy, when Mama coming home?" was the child's next plaintive question.  
  
Richard had carried her as far as the door, but now he stopped and locked eyes with his daughter. What he saw in her face seemed to deepen the lines in his, making him look momentarily even older than Zeddicus.  
  
"She's not coming home, sweetheart," Richard said, so quietly that Nicci had to use a sliver of Han to hear his words. "Not ever. She's gone."  
  
Mary's lip trembled. She squirmed to get free, and hit Richard with the doll when he didn't let her down fast enough. Then she pushed the door open and fled. Nicci caught a glimpse of red leather and guessed Cara was still outside, guarding Lord Rahl.  
  
Richard walked back to Nicci. She waited until the door swung shut before asking the question burning in her mind:  
  
"Why did you lie to her?"  
  


* * *

  
Nicci could think of only one reason for Richard to want his Han back now: so he might have enough power to drag Kahlan's soul from the Halls of Eternal Peace and into a new body.  
  
Death magic was much harder now that the Veil to the Underworld was sealed, but not impossible. Richard would need a wizard skilled enough to create the elixir and a sorcerer powerful enough to use that elixir to chain Kahlan's soul to another's body. Finally, he would need a Mord'Sith to revive her with the Breath of Life.  
  
He would also need a victim—or a volunteer, because even heartbroken and out of his mind with grief, Nicci couldn't imagine Richard murdering an innocent woman.  
  
She had the eerie sense that Cara might choose to sacrifice herself for the Mother Confessor, but that would leave the revival in the hands of a subordinate Mord'Sith, so perhaps Cara hoped to overpower Nicci and use her body to house Kahlan's spirit.  
  
That way it would be just the three of them. Zeddicus, who had the skill to create the elixir. Richard, who would by then have Nicci's Han, easily enough power for the spell. Cara, who had the Breath of Life.  
  
While Nicci had no intention of dying for the Mother Confessor, she did understand Richard's loss.  
  
He would do anything for Kahlan.  
  
Anything.  
  
Nicci didn't know what she would do for Richard, if he asked. If he needed her even a tenth as much as he needed Kahlan.  
  
She didn't know, and she feared the answer.  
  


* * *

  
  
"What?"  
  
Richard stared at Nicci. She saw that shock had for once entirely replaced the numb grief in his eyes.  
  
So she explained.  
  
When she finished, Richard stared at her with such horror that she was afraid he was going to call her a monster again, like when she'd cast the Maternity Spell and held Kahlan's life hostage for his cooperation.  
  
Instead he just shook his head and sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he threw his head back and laughed.  
  
"Richard?" Nicci asked. She dared to put a hand on his knee.  
  
The spell she had yet to cast hung heavy in the air around them. She could still have yanked all that Han back to herself as easily as she'd close her hand into a fist, but she let it hover instead, and hoped it gave the Mord'Sith outside a headache.  
  
Richard looked at Nicci. He stopped laughing.  
  
Expectation of magic was like invisible clouds swirling around them.  
  
Richard took Nicci's hands in his. His touch was gentle, his fingers calloused from fighting with the Sword of Truth. Nicci still knelt, but now she was almost in Richard's lap. Her hair blew in a wind that couldn't be natural, since they were in an enclosed room.  
  
Nicci shut her eyes.  
  
She could still feel Richard. His hands, his thigh where it touched hers. His spirit.  
  
She gathered magic in her palms and pushed it toward Richard.  
  
At first he took it in, but it wasn't long before Nicci felt him start to resist. She pushed harder. Stopping now could kill them both. Richard might be happy to join his beloved Kahlan in death, but that didn't mean Nicci was going to let him take her with him.  
  
Han stretched between Richard and Nicci like a long string of taffy. And, like taffy, eventually it broke.  
  
Richard and Nicci fell back, away from each other.  
  
Nicci just lay on the floor in the center of the candle-lit circle with her eyes closed for several moments. She took careful stock of the state of her inner being, but she still felt magic enlivening her spirit.  
  
Richard picked her up, lifting Nicci so that her head rested on his lap. Magic hovered around him, too, less comfortably than for Nicci but no less present. It was puzzling. Nicci frowned.  
  
"Are you hurt?" asked Richard. He didn't sound really concerned, just curious.  
  
Nicci opened her eyes to look into his handsome, grief-deadened features.  
  
Then—still looking at Richard—she opened her eyes a second time and looked at the world with spell sight.  
  
The unbroken golden line of Han connecting Nicci and Richard was obvious now. The reason for them to still be magically linked was less so.  
  
But solving the tangle of Han could wait. It had settled peacefully around Richard and Nicci like a warm cloak already.  
  
A different problem eclipsed the strange behavior of the magic in Nicci's mind. She couldn't imagine how it had taken her this long to think of it.  
  
Nicci sat up abruptly, twisting out of Richard's grasp and then crossing her arms.  
  
"Explain something to me, Seeker," she ordered. "Since you don't plan to bring the Mother Confessor back, you only wanted your Han so you could torment yourself with possessing the power to save your wife _now_ , when you didn't have it _then_."  
  
"That's not a question," Richard said warily.  
  
Nicci took a breath. "How does your pathetic need to torture yourself with might-have-beens give you the right to steal my magic?"  
  
Richard's eyes narrowed. He looked as if he were wishing for the Sword of Truth again.  
  
Nicci had changed her mind. What Richard needed was more suffering, not less. Someone to drag his thoughts from his loss. Someone to quarrel with.  
  
And Nicci knew how to give offense.  
  
She raised both eyebrows in her best contemptuous look, and prepared to do battle.


End file.
